UMBC CSEE alumnus Ralph Semmel recognized by National Academy of Engineering Ralph Semmel, Ph.D. '92, Computer Science, has been elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Election to the NAE is among the highest levels of professional recognition conferred to any engineer. Semmel, director emeritus of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), is recognized for his "leadership in generating innovative and disruptive engineering advancements in defense, national security and space exploration." 

Semmel joined APL in 1985, holding a range of technical and leadership roles before becoming the Laboratory's eighth director in 2010 and serving for 15 years, guiding the Laboratory through a period of strategic growth and transformation.

Semmel was named a UMBC Outstanding Alumni of the Year in 2011. His career includes influential leadership and technical roles advancing artificial intelligence, database systems, and software engineering. Members of the NAE Class of 2026 will be formally inducted during the NAE Annual Meeting.
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Congratulations to CSEE alumna Dr. Nelli Mosavi-Hoyer, Ph.D. '17, Electrical Engineering, for receiving the Aerospace Awareness Award from Women in Aerospace (WIA), a leading professional organization dedicated to expanding women's opportunities for leadership, education and visibility in the aerospace community. Dr. Mosavi-Hoyer is currently a Project Manager at The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

The award recognized Dr. Mosavi-Hoyer for "excellence and innovation in outreach and raising public understanding of aerospace programs and her commitment to advancement of women in aerospace."  Her award will be formally recognized at the WIA's 38th annual awards ceremony on December 13, 2023 at the Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City, Arlington VA. 

At JHUAPL, she has been a project manager for NASA’s EZIE and Van Allen Probes missions and helped establish the APL Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium to bring together experts from academia, industry, and government to shape technologies and systems needed to explore the surface of the Moon in new ways. 

Dr. Mosavi-Hoyer was part of UMBC's Computational Photonics Laboratory headed by Professor Curtis Menyuk, who supervised her 2017 dissertation on Optical and RF Beam Propagation in Turbulent Media. In 2019, she taught special topics class on Satellite Communications at UMBC


You can read more about her work on this JHUAPL news release.

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